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Symbiotic Robot Organisms: REPLICATOR and SYMBRION Projects
Kernbach Serge, Meister Eugen, Schlachter Florian, Jebens Kristof, Szymanski Marc, Liedke Jens, Laneri Davide, Winkler Lutz, Schmickl Thomas, Thenius Ronald, Corradi Paolo, Ricotti Leonardo
Abstract
Cooperation and competition among stand - alone swarm agents can increase the collective fitness of the whole system. An interesting form of collective system is demonstrated by some bacteria and fungi, which can build symbiotic organisms. Symbiotic communities can enable new functional capabilities which allow all members to survive better in their environment. In this article we show an overview of two large European projects dealing with new collective robotic systems which utilize principles derived from natural symbiosis. The paper provides also an overview of typical hardware, software and methodological challenges arose along these projects, as well as some prototypes and on-going experiments available on this stage.
Introduction
Nature shows several interesting examples for cooperation of individuals. Most prominent examples of cooperation are found in social insects [1], where specialized reproductive schemes (in most cases just a few out of thousands of colony members are able to reproduce) and the close relationships of colony members favoured the emergence of highly cooperative behaviours [2]. However, also non-eusocial forms of cooperative communities evolved, like the collective hunting in predatory mamals [3] (e.g., lions, whales, ...) or the trophallactic altruism in vampire bats. Such cooperative behaviours are mostly explained by reciprocal advantages due to the cooperative behaviours and/or by the close relationship among the community members. In contrast to that, cooperation sometimes arises also among individuals that are not just very distant in a gene pool, sometimes they do not even share the same gene pool: Cooperative behaviours between members of different species is called ’Symbiosis’. A non-exhaustive list of prominent examples are the pollination of plants by flying insects (or birds), the cooperation between ants and aphids. Also lichens, which are a close integration of fungi and algae and the cooperation between plant roods and fungi represent symbiotic interactions.
A common pattern in all these above-mentioned forms of cooperation is that single individuals perform behaviours, which - on the first sight - are more supportive for the collective of the group than for themselves. However, as these behaviours have emerged through natural selection, we can assume that these cooperative behaviours have their ultimate reasoning in a sometimes delayed and often non-obvious individual egoistic advantage.
Symbiotic forms of organization emerge new functional capabilities which allow aggregated organisms to achieve better fitness in the environment. When the need of aggregation is over, symbiotic organism can dis-aggregate and exists further as stand-alone agents, thus an adaptive and dynamical form of cooperation is often advantageous.
Lately, technical systems mimic natural collective systems in improving functionality of artificial swarm agents. Collective, networked or swarm robotics are scientific domains, dealing with a cooperation in robotics [4]. Current research in these domains is mostly concentrated on cooperation and competition among stand-alone robots to increase their common fitness [5]. However, robots can build a principally new kind of collective systems, when to allow them to aggregate into a multi-robot organism-like-forms. This ”robot organism” can perform such activities that cannot be achieved by other kind of robotic systems and so to achieve better functional fitness.
To demonstrate this idea, we consider a collective energy foraging scenario for micro-robots Jasmine [6]. Swarm robots can autonomously find an energy source and recharge. The clever collective strategy can essentially improve the efficiency of energy foraging, but nevertheless a functional fitness of a swarm is limited. For instance, if the recharging station is separated from a working area by a small barrier, robots can never reach the energy source. However, if robots aggregate into more complex high-level organism which can pass the barrier, they will reach the docking station. In this way a cooperative organization of robotic system allows an essential increase of functional capabilities for the whole group. The large integrated project ”REPLICATOR” (www.replicatores.eu), funded by the European commission, within the work programme ”Cognitive systems, interaction and robotics”, deals with such issues as reconfigurability of sensors and actuators, adaptive control and learning strategies as well as working in real environments.
The cooperative (swarm-based or symbiotic) organization of the robotic system provides essential plasticity of used hardware and software platforms. The robot organism will be capable of continuously changing its own structure and functionality. Such an evolve-ability opens many questions about principles and aspects of long- and short-term artificial evolution and controllability of artificial evolutionary processes. The large integrated project ”SYMBRION” (www.symbrion.eu), funded by European commission, within the work programme ”Future and Emergent Technologies”, is focused on evolve-ability, dependability and artificial evolution for such robot organisms based on bio-inspired and computational paradigms. Both projects are open-science and open-source.
Both projects, consortia and the European commission are closely cooperating to achieve the targeted goals. It is expected that results of both projects create new technology for making artificial robotic organisms self-configured, selfhealing, self-optimizing and self-protecting from a hardware and software point of view. This leads not only to extremely adaptive, evolve-able and scalable robotic systems, but also enables the robot organisms to reprogram themselves without human supervision, to develop their own cognitive structures and, finally, to allow new functionalities to emerge.
The rest of this paper is organized in the following way: In Section 2 we discuss a new paradigm of symbiotic systems. Section 3 gives an example of the energy foraging scenario. Sections 4 and 5 briefly mention the hardware and software challenges, where as Section 6 introduces several ideas towards evolve-ability of the robot organisms. Finally, in Section 7 we conclude this work.
The full text can be downloaded from: http://ipvs.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/BV/symbrion/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=231